Friday, December 14, 2012

A recent "feature" article of dubious quality on SWTOR's new business model has prompted Scott Jennings to critique the state of gaming journalism. The situation has not changed much since his comments from four years ago regarding coverage of Tabula Rasa's collapse. I remember that post because I had planned to comment on it at the time but never got around to it. Apparently this is a week for dredging up years-old relics, so here are my thoughts.

When it comes to publicly available information and analysis, the professional gaming press sites are always at a disadvantage compared to the crowdsourced masses due to sheer force of manpower. The place where the media outlets have an advantage is in information provided directly from game developers/publishers. This serves a valuable function for the gaming public, but it also puts the gaming press in a very different position from those who cover politics or finance. When all the real information is coming from the people you are covering that - not the product placements or full-screen ads - inevitably affects the tone of the coverage.

You could argue that gaming isn't actually important enough to deserve real journalism, but there is a real demand. Whether a company is actually going to deliver what they're telling the press they plan to deliver matters, because it affects purchasing decisions. When we get to the point where - even as my income has gone up to the point where I can reasonably afford as many games as I feel like playing - the default purchasing decision is "wait and see" for lack of information, it's the folks who made the product that doesn't get the sales or subscriptions it merited who are going to suffer.

4 comments:

Basically, the state of games "journalism" is an issue of money. We live in a capitalist society, so we measure something's worth by how much money it makes.

We have the confluence of four factors:

1. People don't like to pay for stuff online, so people who would use proper game journalism are unlikely to want to pay for it.

2. The ones who are willing to pay are the ones who want to reach the readers: the game publishers/developers. So, they buy ads.

3. Ads are sold based on views. To get more views, you need exclusive content or linkbait. This is why you see sensationalist articles all over the place.

3. To get exclusive content, you need access. To get access, you need to be on good terms with the source. Since the source also pays for the ads, the game "journalists" are basically beholden to the publishers/developers.

We might say bloggers could change this, but let's be honest: they've been co-opted into the system. The biggest sites often try to explain that they're really "just bigger blogs". And, a number of people who write blogs would jump at the opportunity to write for a larger site.

If we could figure out how to make the people who use the content pay for it, it would solve a lot of problems. But, if you could figure that trick out I think it would have a lot bigger applicability outside of games news sites. :)

I agree with Psychochild. Video games "journalism" is funded by the very organisations that the "journalists" are meant to be investigating. Print newspapers suffered to this to an extent as well, but they were also funded by classified ad revenue.

On top of this, there are some very vocal gamers who see bias and corruption everywhere. Game review was too positive? BIAS. Game review too negative? BIAS. And writers push back at the constant criticism and accusations they've been bought off. So we have a writer-reader ecosystem where no-one trusts anyone.

I actually think one of the major flaws in games journalism is that it is stocked with people who lack experience outside of games culture. For instance, having knowledge about finance or how businesses work or applied sociology or artistic criticism or something that means they can write from a point of knowledge rather than just rant from opinion. Currently it seems that a lot of writers lack any real understanding of anything other than "I like video games".

But obviously that's popular enough to gain readers. So perhaps we get the games writing we (as a gaming group) deserve.

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About Player Versus Developer

I'm what they call a "WoW Tourist" - WoW was my first MMO, and being able to set my own schedule is a dealbreaker. At any given time, I can be found ducking in and out of half a dozen different MMO's.

This blog details some of my own personal exploits, but it also focuses on a meta-gaming issue that I find very interesting - the decisions developers make on how to reward player activity, and the decisions players make in response to maximize their own rewards.